maybe for the TMBGITW video shoot lol

LoveGalore said:

IanRG said:

.

And this is why there is only a gay subculture.

.

That is it absolutely exists, but as part of that society's culture wherein all the subcultures and communities exist together side-by-side and they all influence each other to different degrees all the time. Hence, for the purposes of the thread's question, there is no appropriation because is this the theft and inappropriate misuse of a separate culture, not a reflection of different aspects within a culture. The concluding statement made by the OP was "It seems like he got away with a lot in the '80s." and this is wrong. As you say if within a society some people in a community embrace aspects of another community within that society, this can to some extent be of that first community. However, it does not become exclusive to either community and so no one has stolen or got away with anything - they have just shared. To say Prince borrowed from straight performers who borrowed from gay performers or gay audiences embraced these same straight performers, therefore Prince borrowed from gay people can never mean Prince got away with theft from gay culture.

.

In the second paragraph, you defeat your own accusation that anyone who does not agree that merely being effeminate means you are being gay is being disingenuous by admitting that being effeminate does not mean you are being gay. It reminds me of a Jewellery store near where I grew up. It was run by two men, one was as effeminate AF, the other was the complete opposite. The common homophobic response to these business partners was that the effeminate one was gay. This could have been more wrong. It is a gross stereotype because he was the straight married one with kids and it was the normal guy who was the gay one. We know that Prince was not gay and we know why he dressed as he did: The girls loved it and the guys who teased him as a sissy hated it - Raspberry beret is a perfect reflction of this - He had all the girls in the audience dressed like him and dancing like him in a way that I would not call flouncy - It was one of the many, many times he emphasised that the girls loved him for it. We know that he knew his act attracted gay men and we know that he actively rebuffed them everytime. We know that Prince was unequivocal in stating repeatedly that he was not gay. There is nothing disengenous in saying this. What we saw in this thread was a gay checklist that focused on a small list of things that the author saw as gay that were also things Prince did. Your conclusion misses an important distinction - Prince did not act the way he did to provoke all staight people - He did it to attract straight girls that loved it (hence he was acting straight for them) knowing that it provoked the types of boys who teased him as a child. It is a gross and wrong stereotype to imagine that all Prince's fans were the people who were not straight because he deliberately provoked straight ppl.

[Edited 8/31/22 14:31pm]

Imagine thinking you aren't the one projecting when you make claims like "we know Prince rebuffed gay men every time." You don't know shit, tbh, lol.

.

This is the problem when you don't read for understanding:

.

The article YOU praised said:

.

"In the same 1981 Rolling Stone interview where Prince intentionally muddied the waters of his...background, he made another thing uncharacteristically clear. “Appearances to the contrary,” reported journalist Bill Adler, “he says he’s not gay, and he has a standard rebuff for overenthusiastic male fans: ‘I’m not about that; we can be friends, but that’s as far as it goes. My sexual preferences really aren’t any of their business.’"

.

You are projecting your wishful thoughts despite you knowing he was not gay - You have so much invested in a fantasy you know is not true that you only see what you want to see.

IanRG said:

LoveGalore said:

IanRG said:

.

This is the problem when you don't read for understanding:

.

The article YOU praised said:

.

"In the same 1981 Rolling Stone interview where Prince intentionally muddied the waters of his...background, he made another thing uncharacteristically clear. “Appearances to the contrary,” reported journalist Bill Adler, “he says he’s not gay, and he has a standard rebuff for overenthusiastic male fans: ‘I’m not about that; we can be friends, but that’s as far as it goes. My sexual preferences really aren’t any of their business.’"

.

You are projecting your wishful thoughts despite you knowing he was not gay - You have so much invested in a fantasy you know is not true that you only see what you want to see.

You're making shit up again.

.

No, I really am not. You just want it to be shit.

.

I am quoting directly from the article YOU said was "A great ready(sic), really! Says exactly what I think on the topic."

.

Now you think what it said is shit because it is does not say what you want it to say - but you have to falsely accuse others because they pointed out what you missed

[Edited 8/31/22 18:23pm]

IanRG said:

LoveGalore said:

IanRG said:

.

No, I really am not. You just want it to be shit.

.

I am quoting directly from the article YOU said was "A great ready(sic), really! Says exactly what I think on the topic."

.

Now you think what it said is shit because it is does not say what you want it to say - but you have to falsely accuse others because they pointed out what you missed

[Edited 8/31/22 18:23pm]

Again, you make shit up, reimagine the written word, and type long and exhausting posts in order to dominate the conversation. It's only because I've indulged your dog whistling bullshit that this lame thread has gone on for so long. You're never gonna change anyone's mind and no one gives a shit to change yours. Go back to wearing panties for your girlfriend and imagining other men in their own underwear. [Edited 8/31/22 18:28pm]

.

Bullshit. I am quoting the article. YOU know it is true that Prince rebuffed advances by gay men - you know he was not gay, you have said so many times.

.

It is you who has extended this thread with your bullshit - this has been personal attacks, pathetic attempts to make me feel uncomfortable with you personal questions and obviously fake and ineffectual flirting etc. You have dominated the thread by arguing with everyone who disagrees with you, not just me - And I have noticed that you do this in other threads.

IanRG said:

LoveGalore said:

IanRG said:

.

Bullshit. I am quoting the article. YOU know it is true that Prince rebuffed advances by gay men - you know he was not gay, you have said so many times.

.

It is you who has extended this thread with your bullshit - this has been personal attacks, pathetic attempts to make me feel uncomfortable with you personal questions and obviously fake and ineffectual flirting etc. You have dominated the thread by arguing with everyone who disagrees with you, not just me - And I have noticed that you do this in other threads.

Making shit up again.

.

Do you think that this tactic of yours is any less stupid or at all likely to be more successful than all your other attempts to cover that Prince rebuffed advances by gay men and did what he did because the Girls loved it?

IanRG said:

LoveGalore said:

IanRG said:

.

Do you think that this tactic of yours is any less stupid or at all likely to be more successful than all your other attempts to cover that Prince rebuffed advances by gay men and did what he did because the Girls loved it?

See, you keep making shit up because you're a mega troll. I don't really give a shit what your interpretation is of any of these events and yet here you are taking it to the nth degree again. You can let the mouse go, bud.

.

Not one thing made up at all - I quoted directly from the article you praised so highly.

.

You are trying to deflect from you being caught out assuming I made things up:

.

- It was not me saying Prince rebuffed advances by gay men - It was the article quoting from a previous Rolling Stone article.

.

- It was not me saying what Prince did he did it because the girls loved it - It was Prince himself as quoted in the article you praised.

.

You cannot change history just because it does not fit your fantasies and it is pointless anyway because you know your fantasy was always going to be unrequited and is now unrequitable. You know Prince was not gay and he rebuffed all gay men who hoped otherwise.

.

Everytime you seek to deflect by attacking with false accusations, I will defend with these facts. Ending the pointlessness of how you are carrying on is all in your hands.

LoveGalore said:

Nah bud, you're a mega troll and you certainly aren't having a discussion in good faith. You've made several sly and openly blatant digs and like to turn it around and describe me and my posts in provocative ways that really aren't accurate or true to life. You can play devil's advocate and try to devalue the queer influence on Prince's lifelong aesthetic all you want. It matters not. Know why? It's already out there. It's bigger than you. As is gay culture. It towers over you and any other person standing on a macho hill. Bye bye.

.

I tried to have a conversation with you in good faith but YOU are the one that first made the digs, the accusations, the false flirtations, anything rather than discuss the topic once you found you could not address what I said to you. All I did was defend myself from your personal attacks and your feeble attempts to make me feel uncomfortable with your false flirtations and personal questions. That you did not like someone giving back what YOU STARTED is your problem not mine.

.

That you overvalue any LGBTIQIA+ influence on Prince by never being able to address that you never could find that Prince was more influenced by Gay men in Minneapolis than by the clear influences of Glam Rockers, Funkadelic/Parliament, James Brown, Sly Stone, Little Richard and the general androgyny around in Prince's formative year etc is your problem not mine. I never said that there was no gay influence, just that there were bigger influences. If you read and understood what was said to you, you would have realised this - but you are too embedded in your hopeless fantasy.

.

If you were really gay, then you would know that there are many, many gay men standing on their macho hills and they form part of the Gay subcultures in both our cultures. I can name gay men that are far more macho than me, including one who has done a number of tours of service in Afghanistan. You really need to get out of the 1950s and realise that not all Gay men are effeminate or act and dress like Prince.

.

Bye, I cannot say that it has been fun.

[Edited 8/31/22 22:57pm]

paisleyparkgirl said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

if i may respond in general terms, just cos someone borrows from straight male artists and straight female artists, that does not mean that those artists are not embraced by, and therefore part of - to some extent - gay culture. kinda like how james brown was no rap artist, neither was gil scot heron, but both were key to hip hop culture.

gay aesthetics, imagery, iconography, mannerisms, behaviour, shouldnt be isolated to a small list of typical essentials, but to deny that there IS a certain gay aesthetic (or idk, a pop-gay aesthetic, if you arent happy with gay culture being defined by effeminate behaviour), and that prince embodied it quite often, though obv not wholly, is a bit disengenuous. i mean, that flouncing dance he does in the rapsberry beret video for example, was effeminate AF. does being effeminate = gay? well, no. but its certainly a big part of being 'gay'. its def fair to say that a lot of straight ppl had a narrow definition of what gay men were like, but its clear that enough gay dudes saw prince and saw something of themselves in his act. and im pretty sure, that prince knew that. he knew what the impact of acting gay, even as a stage act, was, and its currency for both provocation (of straight ppl) and inclusion (for those that werent).

I heard that he only allowed ladies at his concerts in Paisley Park at one point. Can anyone confirm ?

i heard there were 'Ladies Nights' every once in a while where he performed.

JorisE73 said:

LoveGalore said:

JorisE73 said:

i heard there were 'Ladies Nights' every once in a while where he performed.

Yes and Ladies Night is a promotional thing common in US venues. It just means ladies get in for free and/or there's drink specials for women. Not that women can only enter lol.

ah ok, wasn't aware of that.

in conclusion, prince wanted people to think he was gay, but he also wanted people to know he was straight, but actually everyone knows he only wanted to have sex with women as he wasnt bisexual (unless you know people in mpls, in which case duh, ofc he was), he dressed in feminine clothing and shoes because women liked it, he wasnt appropriating anything from gay dudes as he was just being effeminate and being efffeminate (even in the 80s) doesnt mean youre gay or even looking gay, prince didnt even know what gay culture was, he was just borrowing from glam rock and glam funk, prince wasnt actually effeminate, he was just flamboyant, either way prince just did it to shock, he was actually anti-gay and protested too much for someone dressing like he might be at stonewall, he gave nothing and did nothing for gays except look like he was one of them (maybe) at a time when gayness wasnt seen in the media much, but there is no such thing as gay culture anyway, so whats the fuss, prince couldnt appropriate anything as it didnt exist in the first place.

[Edited 9/1/22 11:19am]

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

in conclusion, prince wanted people to think he was gay

That's entirely and 100% untrue.

RJOrion said:

no woman has EVER asked or told anyone to "jack her off"...and no man has ever heard a woman say, "will u jack me off"...period

"Finger Your Cunt" didn't roll off the tongue as easily.

Besides, men don't have menopause despite popular opinion.

he wanted people to think he was AND wasnt gay. he loved toying with people. he loved confusing/perplexing/provoking people as well as claiming to be hurt and misunderstood when all the while he wanted to be very misunderstood as there was more fun to be had and more artistic mileage in that. his whole thing was about being everything to everyone on some level. the musician doth protest too much.

TrivialPursuit said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

in conclusion, prince wanted people to think he was gay

That's entirely and 100% untrue.

.

Correct. He was unequivocal in this over and over again. To think otherwise is just wishful thinking

RJOrion said:

no woman has EVER asked or told anyone to "jack her off"...and no man has ever heard a woman say, "will u jack me off"...period

.

Untrue.

.

And irrelvant because Prince is not a woman and not playing a woman when Prince sang he jack the woman in the song off.

IanRG said:

TrivialPursuit said:

That's entirely and 100% untrue.

.

Correct. He was unequivocal in this over and over again. To think otherwise is just wishful thinking

you guys are a bit literal.

yes, he did repeat several times things to the effect of the line in Uptown. And yet, he clearly wanted to keep people guessing somewhat, or wanted to not have to stick with the average straight-male behaviour, which might be fine if youre a rockstar, but for most ppl IRL, this is just where you enter the gayness-campness-effeminancy axis. you can say its what glam rockers did, but lol, when they did it, it was also seen as flirting with homosexuality. you mightve heard of this guy named david bowie?

is this really so hard to accept?

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

IanRG said:

.

Correct. He was unequivocal in this over and over again. To think otherwise is just wishful thinking

you guys are a bit literal.

You literally said, and I quote, "in conclusion, prince wanted people to think he was gay."

As I noted, that is entirely untrue.

It's almost like you've never listened to his music, at all. Ever.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

IanRG said:

.

Correct. He was unequivocal in this over and over again. To think otherwise is just wishful thinking

you guys are a bit literal.

yes, he did repeat several times things to the effect of the line in Uptown. And yet, he clearly wanted to keep people guessing somewhat, or wanted to not have to stick with the average straight-male behaviour, which might be fine if youre a rockstar, but for most ppl IRL, this is just where you enter the gayness-campness-effeminancy axis. you can say its what glam rockers did, but lol, when they did it, it was also seen as flirting with homosexuality. you mightve heard of this guy named david bowie?

is this really so hard to accept?

.

I completely agree that Prince at different times both courted controversy and rejected controversy about race, sexuality etc. However, this does not mean that he wanted people to think he was gay which when you said it can only be taken as meaning he wanted people to think he was gay. He clearly devoted so much to telling people he was not and not just in Uptown.

.

That some Glam rockers etc may have flirted with homosexuality like David Bowie does not mean that all other similar performers did.

.

Had you said Prince alternated between not minding and minding if people thought he was gay because he enjoyed playing with his audience but sometimes felt he had to clarify things then I would agree with you.

.

Part of the problem here is people are trying to form a view of a song writer largely by the songs. This assumes that all the songs where that person was the singer had him as the lead character in the story and that all these stories are accurately and consistently only ever explaining that character, therefore the writer. This is not possible.

.

Prince dressed to shock and stand out to women - He could not stand out by pretending to be a jock or by just looking like a petite music nerd. It is the same as in the words of his songs - he often used words to get attention either by shocking the audience or making them think. The only consistency in this is when he was singing a song about having sex, there is no song where it is about sex between two men.

[Edited 9/1/22 14:56pm]

TrivialPursuit said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

TrivialPursuit said:

You literally said, and I quote, "in conclusion, prince wanted people to think he was gay."

As I noted, that is entirely untrue.

It's almost like you've never listened to his music, at all. Ever.

Its almost like you have no subjectivity.

Look sis, I'm not trying to read into your thoughts. You say A, I'm going to resopnd to A. Not M, N, and O because I think that's what you really mean.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. For once.

TrivialPursuit said:

LoveGalore said:

TrivialPursuit said:

Look sis, I'm not trying to read into your thoughts. You say A, I'm going to resopnd to A. Not M, N, and O because I think that's what you really mean.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. For once.

But what he said is clear. That Prince desired the ambiguity. This is clear and that is indicated by it literally being a cornerstone of what made him famous. Prince always, always had a sense of humor about this shit and that's how he got away with being so fuckin gay. And btw, all those glam rockers and Little Richards and Sylvesters out there were playing with the same sort of ambiguous aesthetic. Bowie dead ass claimed to be bisexual for a period and took it way farther in one direction than Prince ever did. But he clearly knew he'd make men uncomfortable in some fashion be it because of revulsion or attraction.

right. prince owned that ambiguity, mystery, enigma, general unstraightforwardness from the start of his career to the end. at times it got tedious in the last 18 or so years (as far as certain lyrics becoming weirdly coy and overly cryptic), but before that, when it came to mystery and all that stuff, he did it better than anyone, to the point that when he did start revealing some stuff, and trying to be more 'honest', i didnt like it. rock n roll was all about beig outrageous, provoking, teasing, as well as the right to be an egotistical, hedonistic individualist (exctly what western capitalism loves) who didnt appease anyone, didnt give AF, did what he wanted, and prince was all of that. today, thats a bit less cool, ppl want you to play to the SJW twitterati more, even if half the time its a load of fake shit, so if prince was starting out now, hed prob be expected by some to shout out his LGBT fans explicitly, show he Stands with the LGBT community and so on, but back in the 80s, prince told journalists on one hand that he wasnt gay and acted aggrieved at being thought of as gay, then went on stage in the evening, pouting, strutting and camping it up, acting in a way that he knew would get him called 'gay'. that is what prince was all about, and what made him so fun.

[Edited 9/1/22 15:53pm]

[Edited 9/2/22 16:01pm]

LoveGalore said:

TrivialPursuit said:

Look sis, I'm not trying to read into your thoughts. You say A, I'm going to resopnd to A. Not M, N, and O because I think that's what you really mean.

Say what you mean and mean what you say. For once.

But what he said is clear. That Prince desired the ambiguity. This is clear and that is indicated by it literally being a cornerstone of what made him famous. Prince always, always had a sense of humor about this shit and that's how he got away with being so fuckin gay. And btw, all those glam rockers and Little Richards and Sylvesters out there were playing with the same sort of ambiguous aesthetic. Bowie dead ass claimed to be bisexual for a period and took it way farther in one direction than Prince ever did. But he clearly knew he'd make men uncomfortable in some fashion be it because of revulsion or attraction.

.

So long as you meant "with acting so fuckin gay", not being, it is good to see that you have come around to my point of view of an ambiguous aesthetic.

[Edited 9/1/22 18:24pm]